Wet around the gills: conflating idioms

It started with my father, the bastard. He passed it on to me and there's nothing I can do. That's science. Darwin provided us with the perfect excuse. I am not responsible for the way I am. It's all society and ancestry, my bloated arthritic gay great-grandmother and the one-room metal box where I was raised in downtown shitville. Thankfully I'm preaching to a dead horse. We're all evolutionists now.

My father's verbal memory was a tricky bastard. It didn't start that way, at least according to his stories, which I, his only child, heard ad nauseum every day of my youth. When he was in his 20s and 30s, he did those impossible newspaper crosswords every day and blew the competition out of the water. He would refer to Martin Riggs (from Lethal Weapon) as “John Smith” because Mel Gibson played Riggs and also voice acted Smith in “Pocahontas”.

I remember him saying that he was trying to “nail the hammer on the head” and advised me not to “count all my eggs before they hatch”. He would try to “shoot the blue moon” when playing Hearts online. With his mourned that he would “burn that bridge when [he] came to it.” It was all amusing as hell until I noticed that I was cursed with the same problem.

Today I said “wet around the gills,” after which my wife glanced pityingly in my direction, like Professor Higgins to Eliza Dolittle before she gained the insufferable accent. Being sure of the rightness of my poetic instinct, I googled the phrase. 5,590 hits, or rather, only 5,590 hits. Google proceeds to reveal that my brain is conflating two idioms. “Green around the gills” scores 985,000 hits. “Wet around the ears” gets 19.3 million.

That a phrase exists on the Internet is hardly the litmus test for its rightness or coherence. Even “green around the gizzard” may be found on page 146 in an e-book entitled Sundays in August. People will publish any wild herring these days. Judging by research by the International Data Corporation, we should be closing in on 3 zettabytes of global information, and I may not be able to fathom the ridiculous volume of information that entails, but I do know it includes that every moron like myself who posts a comment on Youtube and all those posts may or may not be included in a Google search. (In fact I tried googling a youtube comment I made a few years ago and thank God, nothing showed, which means that not every word ever interneted is forever available.)

I conclude that there are up to 5,589 other mental delinquents out there, and I can still be proud to say that before this article I never published the phrase.

I'm getting off-track. I was trying to discussing conflating idioms. Conflations.com defines this common confusion as “an amalgamation of two different expressions. In most cases, the combination results in a new expression that makes little sense literally, but clearly expresses an idea because it references well-known idioms.” The introductory articles goes on to distinguish between conflations that are still interpreted to mean the same thing (e.g. “look who's calling the kettle black”) from conflations that do not – usually rendered as incoherent as a red goose chase.

But I'm in good company. During the October 7, 2008 Presidential debate, Barack Obama made a similar error. “Now, Senator McCain suggests that somehow... I'm green behind the ears.” The best part is, this could be taken (at least out of context) as the Democratic candidate, still smarting from the birthing controversies, making a Freudian slip and referring to himself as an alien (i.e. little green man).

And now I live in France, which makes it easier, but I live with my wife, who is an educated linguaphile with a perfect memory and an insatiety for pop culture, which makes home a constant stream of embarrassing moments. For years I was able to pride myself on my golden tongue – not so hard when you teach English to Hispanics, French to Americans, and you live with aforementioned dad.

I suppose the dagger's practically in the coffin. Right? Anybody?

Don't rain on my gay parade: Equality and the future of marriage

First Amendment freedoms are most in danger when the government seeks to control thought or to justify its laws for that impermissible end. The right to think is the beginning of freedom, and speech must be protected from the government because speech is the beginning of thought. --Justice Anthony M. Kennedy
     President Obama's recent statement - his personal support of same-sex marriage and rejection of civil unions, putting him in stark contrast with Mr Romney - has given everyone a lot to think about. While I am not ignorant of the campaigning dynamic going on in such an unambiguous admission, neither am I interested in it. Rather, I am interested in the question it raises for the future of American society. Should we, like the President, embrace homosexuality as equal under the law in all respects? Or should we, like the soon-to-be Republican candidate, embrace the preservation of traditional, monogamous, heterosexual marriage?
     First, a preliminary philosophical observation. Always and in every society there is an Other (a group generally viewed as outside the accepted circle of good, God-approved individuals) who is denied social equality and legitimacy. We see a long list of Others in our society's history. Women, visible minorities, religious minorities, disabled persons, subcultures, and so on.

     Some societies perpetuate these prejudices and preserve social and legal inequality. This is done by squelching the voice of the Other and preventing it from being heard as a valid point of view. In some societies prejudices increase because of economic rivalry, a historical wrong or sociocultural resentment. However, as a democratic society evolves, these prejudices have generally been eroded by other more enduring values and principles.
     In a democratic society it is inevitable that, once they are considered persons and citizens with the right to vote, the voice of the Other will be heard. That voice will complain of the prejudices endured and their manifestation as gross legal inequalities. It is always in the legal arena that any issue in inequality will first come to a head.
     A democratic society will invariably increase legal equality of non-destructive preferences and behaviors, whatever these may be, and regulate or ban preferences and behaviors that hurt those besides their practitioners. John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859. This ranges from sexual self-determination to the use of narcotics to ethnic background to religious belief/practice to protesting to riding a bicycle without using a helmet. Our legal courts are charged with seeing the basic trajectory of our country and, when it is time, creating or altering laws to increase equality and decrease destructive acts.
     Legislation in a democratic society cannot be coterminous with morality. In the United States we expect to enjoy personal freedoms, even if we do not always follow the status quo. We are allowed to live in peace with differing views and practices on many subjects. We understand the difference between morality and law - no wonder that so many moral people break laws on a regular basis without a single pang of guilt.

     You don't see pornography or other sexually explicit entertainment outlawed, do you? People who see homosexuality as immoral almost certainly view these other practices as immoral - and many others, too. However, it doesn't matter how many people believe watching porn is wrong. Laws are not written based on what the majority believe is moral or immoral. Laws have to do, as I said already, with stopping people from hurting others, and granting equality to groups disenfranchised in older generations. It is unethical to write a law stopping someone from doing something just because you think they shouldn't. That's called bigotry.
     Therefore, there is no basis whatsoever to outlaw minority practices unless they are destructive to others. I have the right to believe an act to be immoral but I do not have the right to impose my view on others. I have the right to believe an act to be moral but I do not have the right to require others to do it, or to see things the same way. A democratic society believes in free thought, which stands and falls on free speech, which stands and falls on free action - so long as my free action does not impinge on the rights of someone else.
     Only if gay marriage is destructive to others, therefore, can there be any basis for outlawing it. Otherwise it's simply a clear-cut example of an oppressed minority finally having an opportunity to receive equal treatment under the law - the constitutional right of the GLBT community as much as it is mine or any heterosexual person.
     So, does gay marriage hurt others? I don't think that it has ever hurt me. No gay or lesbian has ever hurt me by simply being the way they are, much less hurting me by committing themselves to each other in monogamous, life-long union. I can't see how that could ever hurt me. Am I missing something here?
Here are some possible arguments of how homosexuality and gay marriage could be destructive to others:

1. God will punish the entire society for its immoral conduct. The biblical story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is the chief example supporting this argument. However, if you read the story carefully, you'll note that Abraham only has to find ten righteous people in the whole city to save it. As long as heterosexual marriage is resolutely preserved, then, I can't see why even the most superstitious person would worry about being turned into a gigantic salt shaker. 
2. Homosexuality will be approved by society so it will harder to convince our children that it is wrong. Exposure to a different idea or way of life is not the same as actual harm. If it was, we could not stop until we had a morally homogeneous society, and this conception runs contrary to every fiber in my democratic body.
3. Gay marriage will lead to gay adoption. Let's assume it does, or will, eventually, given the view of democratic society I outlined above. I've never heard of a study showing that a child raised by a gay couple is more likely to have some serious psychological trauma, or be abused, or anything else. Again, it's pretty clear that the horror of the idea of kids being "raised gay" is a result of moral prejudice. Such prejudice is the right of anyone, but by no means can it determine the direction of new legislation.
4. Gay marriage will lessen the validity of heterosexual marriage and lead to the destruction of the institution of marriage, raise divorce rates, corrupt society because the family unit no longer passes on valuable moral teachings to children, etc. I say, there's some truth in that. But the bigger truth is that Western society lost that battle almost one hundred years ago with the legalization of birth control methods as part of the early feminist movement and the liberation of women to be more than baby factories.

     The fact of the matter is that marriage isn't primarily about babies anymore. Society has changed, for better or for worse, and there's no going back. To try to salvage an obsolete notion of marriage is hopeless. In fifty years no one outside of extremely conservative religious groups will even bother. I can visualize the Catholic church continuing to maintain strict policies against both contraceptives and gay marriage for maybe that long, but not much longer. American society, meanwhile, will continue to develop and update its laws to reflect its nature - assuming the political scene is fixed sometime before the Union of States utterly dissolves. If you want a society that considers marriage to be primarily about progeny, you'll have to go to some other part of the world (not Europe). But I predict as their populations stabilize and the middle class becomes wealthier, as health care quality and availability increases and infant death mortality drops, the urge to define marriage in terms of procreation will weaken and ultimately fade.
     Folks, it's a brave new world out there, and we need to go and be part of it. Instead of pining for a lost era where black was black and white was white, we need to figure out how to make society work as best as it can.

Diversity in education

     It is often said that no two people are exactly the same. At the same time, it is also true that most children have a lot in common, whether it be the stages of cognitive development, generational social trends, or cultural thinking patterns. And it is on this very basis that teachers teach diverse classrooms as a single unit. While modifications per student are provided as needed, differentiation takes a back seat to the homogeneous modeling, scaffolding, skill-mastering and assessing that characterizes the bulk of what takes place in the classroom.

However, as the world shrinks and multicultural communities form in urban areas, schools invariably become increasingly diverse. Teachers are continually challenged to teach larger groups of students who give the impression of uniformity – whether due to age, dress code, or trends in language and behaviorisms – while in fact significant differences only multiply. As these differences become more apparent over time, educators determine whether to group students by specific characteristics – academic competence, language fluency, cultural background, special needs – or to let the chips fall where they may.

      The landmark ruling in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, KS emphasized that the desegregation of public schools would be a great boon to the American education system. The natural interaction between students despite their differences results is academically beneficial, as research and reason both demonstrate.

      Sadly, diversity can also be attempted thoughtlessly and may easily result in depressed education standards and increased conflict between distinct communities. The story of Erin Gruwell and her LA-based "Freedom Writers" is a case in point. Woodrow Wilson High School in Long Beach implemented a voluntary integration program that only aggravated the high level of tension between the African-American, Asian, White and Latino neighborhoods.

     Social engineering carries inherent risks and must be executed carefully.   Educators must be prudent not to promote students of different backgrounds in a way that reduces individual children to certain characteristics, whether sexual orientation, ethnic heritage, or learning style. Healthy interaction between diverse student groups demands equality, unity, and an environment where intimate peer relationships may be developed safely.

      At Santa Fe South High School in Oklahoma City, for example, a complex urban environment coupled with ethnic prejudices results in a unique situation that requires care and attention. The Latino demographic in Oklahoma City and southwestern United States generally is one that experiences social, and recently legal, prejudice, due to the ongoing complications of illegal immigration and related issues. SFS HS is predominantly Hispanic, with about 10% African-American and 10% White. These minorities, while economically and socially dominant (the former clearly less so) as a national ethnicity, now experience a turning of the tables on campus. Strained relations between these groups create ongoing prejudice on campus, but due to the clear dominance of the Latino community, conflict is minimal. Every school experiences its own issues relating to diversity and no educator has the privilege of ignoring its relevance to the success or failure of public education.

      The classroom teacher must understand and sympathize with these larger population trends if he or she is to create a venue where diversity can be expressed and embraced in the context of a broader and singular vision. And the same rules apply in the case of any significant student groupings. If students of different academic levels, for example, are to work together productively and safely, teachers must address the prejudiced treatment of students, whether by themselves or by other students. Different expectations for stronger or weaker students will not foster resentment or embarrassment if the teacher clearly articulates a common vision of growing in skill and knowledge of the subject matter. If the student's goal is to get a certain grade, and the teacher expects more of one student than another to get the same grade, then equality in assessment is lost, and the students will not trust the teacher, nor will they build healthy, intimate relationships with each other. However, if a growth model is adopted and students are consistently assessed on the basis of individual growth, equality is maintained.

      Indeed, successful diversity in public education is the best way to prepare our children to continue the American democratic tradition, to be responsible global citizens, and to let their world grow beyond the locality in which they were born.